Once, most right-thinking people thought sharing fairly should be the aspiration of any decent society.

Now, those with most pay the least to the collective pot – because they have the tricks to hide their wealth.

And right-wing governments, like the one we currently endure at UK level, allow them to get away with it.

It’s quite staggering to think that I paid more tax in the UK last year than Facebook, who managed to contribute just under £5000 to the Treasury.

The term “upward distribution” was coined by a talented economist called Gabriel Zucman.

In his book The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman writes of the rapid growth of inequality and the rise of the elite one per cent, whose wealth is increasingly concealed in tax havens.

He calculates that in the past five years, the amount of wealth in tax havens such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands has increased by a quarter and now accounts for at least $7.6trillion.

It’s worth remembering this when Chancellor George Osborne says there is no alternative to hurting the working poor.

AstraZeneca, one of Britain’s biggest companies, paid absolutely no corporation tax here in 2013 and 2014, despite achieving global profits of almost £3billion in that time.

The Government occasionally mouth condemnation of this kind of thing, but their actions actively encourage it.

The UK Tory Government have, under Osborne, been working with big business to help them find ways of paying less tax. Under Osborne’s “Corporate Tax Reform: Delivering a More Competitive System”, major companies were invited to sit on a liaison committee with officials to develop corporate tax policies.

And the Tories are not even embarrassed about that – it’s right there on the Treasury website.

This process began in 2013 and continues today. Companies write rules for themselves while the rest of the country, that vast majority of honest taxpayers, are told to tighten their belts.

But this is not confined to Britain, as Zucman points out.

In the US, an investigation by Congress found that Apple – a firm with what most consider a wholesome brand – had created a network of complex subsidiaries that resulted in them avoiding tens of billions in tax.

But that is not in any way out of the ordinary.

Apple appear to behave like most multinational companies of their size.

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Zucman argues that we need a global solution to a global problem.

He wrote recently: “Our corporate tax rules, decided by the League of Nations in the 1920s, have not been adapted to an age in which CEOs see it as their duty to dodge taxes and a world where a web of tax havens obliges.”

This is because under those old rules, profits are assigned to the country where they are reported.

So they do most of their ­business in one country, but report the profits to Bermuda, paying nothing in tax.

Zucman points out that taxes avoided by big business are paid by the rest of us – an increase in VAT or income tax paid by low or middle earners, or cuts to services.

He suggests a better way would be to tax each company’s global profits and then distribute them according to where sales are made. As he puts it: “Corporations can move their profits all over the world, but they cannot move their customers.”